HSE MIEM Professor Elected Fellow of American Physical Society
The American Physical Society (APS) has recognised HSE MIEM Professor Lev Shchur for his innovative use of computer simulations and the development of superior random number generators for their use in statistical physics. Professor Shchur is the only academic working in Russia to be selected as APS Fellow in 2017.
Founded in 1899 by physicists from Columbia University, the American Physical Society is one of the oldest academic communities in the world. The society includes 14 divisions and nine thematic groups representing all key areas of modern-day physics.
Lev Shchur’s academic interests lie at the interface of theoretical physics and computer software. He is a leading researcher with the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics in Chernogolovka, Russia. At MIEM, Professor Shchur heads the Joint Department with RAS Dorodnicyn Computing Centre and teaches courses on distributed computing and parallel programming.
Professor Shchur is also the author of more than 140 works that have each made a significant contribution to contemporary science:
- The angle of transversal homoclinic intersection in Yang-Mills equations was numerically determined, which though the help of the computer has proven the non-integrability of Yang-Mills fields.
- In a work co-authored with S. Manakov, stochasticity was found in the scattering of vortex pairs, which is evidence of the non-integrability of two-dimensional hydrodynamic equations.
- A paper co-authored with A. Talapov showed how specialised computers were built to research spin models. A correlation function was numerically obtained for the first time ever, and it was shown that impurities do not change the universality class. Instead they simply modify the correlation length with logarithmic corrections.
- Together with P. Bueter and B. Barash, numerical assessments were created on universal combinations of critical amplitudes in the two-dimensional Potts model, while the precise reduction of logarithmic corrections was shown analytically in the universal relations of critical amplitudes.
- A work co-authored with H. Blöte explained the undesirable correlation between the cluster Monte Carlo method and a random number generator on shift registers. A theory was developed on such correlations.
- A new approach was proposed towards the development of pseudo-random number generators based on the mapping torus and hidden variables. Together with L. Barash, a library of effective random number generators was developed.
- In a work co-authored with M. Novotny, a classification system was proposed for parallel discrete event simulation (PDES) algorithms using the analogy of the evolution of the PDES time horizon together with the evolution of the surface profile in Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equations.
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